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Less than 48 hours after hearing U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra address a gathering of Churchill Club members at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, I find myself a bit skeptical about what I heard.

Big picture, I’m delighted we now have a Chief Technology Officer, and I’m heartened that he’s ostensibly focused on the right metrics, like how the U.S. compares to other countries in terms of rate of innovation, how we are using technology in government, and where we stack up in terms of higher education.  (If you want the details, see the full report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation here; if you want the short version: at present we suck on all of these rankings.  And if we keep going this way, we’ll be, well, suckier still.)

But I’m not convinced the work Chopra is embarking upon will turn those mega-trendlines back in the right direction.  Chopra is articulate, passionate and clearly “of the Valley,” as demonstrated by his resume and his penchant for moving fast.  But for me, some of his early examples of innovation in government fell flat.  In the works is a new U.S. Immigration web site, for example, where people will be able to see in much greater detail where exactly they are in this byzantine process.  I’ve no doubt this is needed and useful (I have a friend who is losing hair and sleep over this very issue).  But is it game-changing?  Hardly.

More compelling (not to mention inspirational) was Chopra’s example of how a group came together in Virginia and applied Web technology to create updated science textbooks in a fracton of the time it used to take (see more here).  Better still, that content is now being used in other states across the country, and the program certainly has the potential to make a greater impact.

Positive steps, to be sure.  But there was so much talk of “what can we do in 90 days?” and “what can we do without any need for new legislation or incremental budget?” that I couldn’t help but think of the “quick win” mentality that, while very often useful, is sometimes undertaken because the Big Stuff is just too damn hard.

Someone asked about the woeful legacy systems that pervade government; I didn’t hear a clear answer on how that will be addressed.  Robert Scoble asked Chopra how he would address things like the Marines banning Twitter (Scoble’s broader point being, of course, that such decisions might discourage innovation in government).  At first, Chopra brushed it off as not in his remit to get involved in military decisions about security, but then acknowledged that overall, the government is so behind he couldn’t access his own financial information from the White House because his browser was a decade old.  I couldn’t help but feel like his exasperation was the most telling–and unscripted–part of the evening.

Quick wins and proof-of-concepts are without a doubt staples of Silicon Valley and illustrative of good, old-fashioned tech entrepreneurial spirit.  But the real measure of success is whether those “POCs” take off–as in, become commercially viable.  Grab market share.  Change the world.

Aneesh and team don’t have to change the world of course–just the biggest and most powerful country in that world.  I got the distinct sense from this week’s event that the Valley is rooting for Aneesh, and ready and willing to help.  But let’s think big.  That’s ultimately what technology innovation has always been about.

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